Good day, kind viewers
of Supreme Master
Television,
and welcome to
Vegetarian Elite!

When I look around and
talk about the love for me
and love for humankind,
wouldn’t it be nice
if we all came together
and waved a magic wand
and made this planet
a humane society?

Can you guess what famous
American personality
we would like to honor
on today’s show?
Well, he has a remarkably
diversified resume!
He is professional
comedian with a career
spanning five decades,
a long-standing
human rights advocate,
bestselling author,
anti-drug crusader,
and expert nutritionist.
He has been honored
at the Kennedy Center
in Washington, D.C. and
is also the loving father
of 10 beautiful children
and a devoted husband
of more than 50 years.
If your guess
was Mr. Dick Gregory,
then you were
absolutely correct!

Supreme Master
Television
had the privilege
of speaking
with Mr. Gregory after
the live videoconference
“World Vegan
World Peace:
A Conscious Choice”
held in
Chicago, Illinois, USA,
in August 2011,
with Supreme Master
Ching Hai
as the Guest of Honor.
On today’s program,
we will also bring you
some highlights of
Mr. Gregory’s stand-up
comedy performance
at the event.

I remember someone
asked me, they said,
“You’ve been fasting
for 40 years.
What does your doctor
think?”
I said, “My doctor’s
been dead 30 years.”
My next birthday,
I’ll be 80 years old.
Next birthday,
my wife will be 75.
We don’t have
a prescription
between the two of us.

So not only when you
change into the vegan,
not only do you help
free up food
for other people,
My God, think
what you do for yourself.
Somebody asked me,
“You’ll be 80
your next birthday?
You look so well.
How do you know
when you getting old?”
You know,
you’re getting old when
somebody compliments
them beautiful shoes
you’re wearing,
and you’re barefooted.

Richard Claxton “Dick”
Gregory has lived a life
far from ordinary.
He is listed on
Comedy Central’s Top 100
Stand-Up Comedians
of All-Time,
and in the 1960s
helped bridge
African-American comedy
to Caucasian audiences
with much success.
After the 1998 birthday
commemoration for
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
then US President
Bill Clinton said,
“I love Dick Gregory,
he is one of the funniest
people on the planet.”

Besides bringing us
much laughter,
he has also been
at the forefront
of advancing peace
and social justice
in our world
as one of the world’s
most influential
civil rights activists.
He has used
his public image
and passionate stance
on non-violence to
speak out numerous times
against war
and for equal rights.
In fact, in 1968,
he ran for President
of the United States for the
Freedom and Peace Party.

And in 1992,
he began a program
called “Campaign
for Human Dignity”
to reduce crime
in his hometown
of St. Louis, Missouri,
where he has also earned
a star on the
St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Perhaps what has made
Mr. Gregory so successful
is his ability
to connect with audiences
on such difficult to discuss
topics like violence.

You know,
we look at TV now,
and so many people
look at TV,
and identify with crises,
they identify
with violence,
and identify with… I got
a cousin in Kansas City;
he even watched
so many TV movies
about violence, he got
27 locks on the door,
and ain’t got nothing
in the house.
I said, “Boy, if somebody
broke in here,
they’d leave something.”

On the health front,
Mr. Dick Gregory
has discovered
many incredible secrets
to long-lasting health
with his research into
raw foods, fruitarianism,
and plant-based diets.
But in 2001, he received
some startling news:
doctors diagnosed him
with cancer.
Nevertheless, with his
strong faith in the power
of self-healing through
vegan foods and exercise,
his resilient spirit
pushed forward to survival
and he remains
cancer-free to this day!
We asked Mr. Gregory
how he got interested
on this path of true health
when he began
his transformational
vegetarian diet
in the early 1970s.

And so about 18 months
after not eating
no animal products,
my sinus trouble left.
My sinus was so bad that
that when you pick me up
at the airport,
have we gone
on a 50 mile radius
I would have had
a sinus attack,
that’s how bad it was.
About six months after
that my ulcers are gone.
I used to wake up
in the morning and
my ulcers would be so bad
I’d have to take my rings,
my watches off, could
nothing touch my body.
Six months after that,
that was gone.
Then I said,
“Wait a minute,
there must be something
to eating they haven’t
told us about,” (Yes.)
and that’s how it started.

I started doing research,
started questioning things,
(Yes.) and then I realized
that I’ve been
in an awful ignorant trick.
You know,
“How can I feel this good
by eliminating something?”
And then after that
I started looking deep,
then I started.

Mr. Gregory started
to explore further
into the fields of nutrition
and over the years
has uncovered
many unsettling truths,
including the dangers
of milk and its strange
and shocking connection
with glue.

And then in going deep
into the research
I found out
that every culture
on the planet that gives
their child cow’s milk,
they have crib death
in that culture.
Cultures that would
never put cow’s milk
into a baby, there is no
such thing as crib death.
Now, then,
when you do the research
you find out
that mother’s milk
has all the nutrition,
all the things you need
to destroy bacteria.

One day, I decided
to do some research
on breast milk, and
called a friend of mine.
I said “I want you
to find the number one
and number two
authorities on breast milk
on the planet,”
and they found them.
They were
at Oxford University.
They said, “Well
the mother has a baby
so she nurses a baby.”
So they said, “Well,
here is what we’ll do.
Let’s catch
the [milk] leakage
and put it in a cooler
and then say,
well let’s check it
for nutrition value.”

They had no idea. (Yes.)
where they were going.
When they checked it,
they found out
that what is leaking
is all the impurity
that’s in the mother’s body.
(Oh wow.)
So if you’re eating foods
with pesticides,
that’s what leaks.
If you smoke cigarettes,
the nicotine leaks
to protect that baby.
Cow’s milk,
the most important
ingredient to milk
is not calcium,
it’s called casein.
Casein builds
the bone structure
to carry the bodyweight.
So cow’s milk has
300 times more casein in it
than mother’s milk
because cow’s milk
has got to build
a bone structure
to carry a ton plus.

Mother’s milk has to
build the bone structure
that carries a maximum
of 175 pounds.
Now, what do they make
commercially out of cows,
out of the casein?
They make kerosene
and they make glue.
Now what happens
with crib death?
Any time
you put cow’s milk
into a human being,
there is a reaction.
So what happened is
the baby drank
the cow’s milk
and the gluey substances,
some of them can’t throw up.
It affects you, everyone.
(Yes) And those
who can’t throw up, died.
It’s why
they call it crib death.
They died in the crib.

After Mr. Gregory’s
personal research,
he met another
high-minded individual
who helped bring
his health knowledge
to even greater heights.

Now this
African American woman,
Dr. Alvenia Fulton
moved me
to another level: fasting.
No one could live
as a human on this planet
if you didn’t fast.
Now let me tell.
When you go to sleep
at night
your body does a fast.
When you wake up
and eat your first meal
that’s when the fast,
we call it “breakfast,”
we don’t even know
we’re saying
“breaking-fast.” (Right.)
The fast is not supposed
to be broken until 12 noon.
Now 12 noon
is not determined
by your watch,
12 noon is determined
when the sun hits your head
at the right angle.
That’s 12 noon.

And so I decided I was
going to fast for 40 days.
Didn’t know anything
about it
except what she told me,
and against the war
in Vietnam,
and so I fasted 40 days
on nothing but water.
I went to 57 cities
and did 63 speeches.
Now what happened is
after the fifteenth day,
my sense of smell;
I could smell stuff
three blocks away. (Yes.)

I could hear stuff.
I asked my wife,
“Why are you all
talking so loud?”
“You all? Nobody else
but you and me.”
So I start walking
toward the sound.
And I walked to the window,
I am on the ninth floor,
and I am picking up
a conversation
of two women
standing in the bus zone
waiting on the bus.
All your sensitivity
wakes up on the fast.

Fortified with so much
powerful information
and experience,
Mr. Gregory decided
to use his celebrity status
to its fullest
and inform the public
about the benefits
of a plant-based lifestyle.
He would sometimes
speak up to 250 days a year
at college campuses
nationwide
about vegetarianism.
Tracye McQuirter,
founder of
BlackVegetarians.org
and author of
“By Any Greens Necessary”
is glowing, vivacious
vegan of over 20 years.
She credits
Mr. Dick Gregory
with her transition.

I honestly never thought
that I would be
a vegetarian, a vegan,
a healthy eater,
none of that.
I never thought
that I would be a
public health nutritionist.
Our black student union
at Amherst College
brought Dick Gregory
to campus to talk about
the state of black America.
And instead,
he flipped the script on us
and he decided
to talk about the plate
of black America.
So he talked about
how unhealthfully
most black folks eat.

He spent the next
two and a half hours
graphically tracing
the path of a hamburger
from a cow
on a factory farm,
to a slaughterhouse,
to a fast food place,
to a clogged artery,
to a heart attack.
And that was the first time
I had ever heard anything
like that in my life,
linking diet to disease.
That was the catalyst that
started me researching
to become a vegetarian.

Mr. Gregory has been
credited for introducing
Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.’s son to vegetarianism
who then went on
to influence his mother,
Coretta Scott King,
to become a vegan.
And these days,
with the uncertainties
surrounding the safety of
genetically modified foods,
Mr. Gregory
shares his concerns:

Have you seen the folks
that can hardly walk?
Can’t think?
That comes from the dye.
(Yes.) That comes from
the animal products. (Yes.)
You know
it’s kind of interesting,
you go to the grocery store
and you go to
the egg section,
they have large eggs,
small eggs, medium eggs.
How do you get a chicken
to lay a large egg?
How do you get a chicken
to lay a medium egg?
It’s something
you’re injected into them.
I had to have somebody
to tell me that
organic ain’t just enough.
Organic is not enough.

To give you an example,
they’re making
organic tomatoes, growing
organic tomatoes. (Yes.)
They’re cross-breeding
them genetically
with the fish cell.
So what does it mean?
That means the tomatoes
hold water. (Yes.)
So I can put a tomato
on this table here,
come back six weeks later,
it’s just as pretty irradiant.
What they don’t tell me
when I eat that tomato,
my body holds water.
Then when I start swelling,
I’ll go see my doctor.
You’re not aware
that the organic tomatoes
have been
genetically engineered.
So when I come to see you,
you put me
on the water pills.

Anytime you put me
on something
to kill something
that I don’t need,
that will kill me. (Yes.)
And so
what I am saying now,
there has to be
a mechanism out here
that has nothing
but a research team
and start putting
that information out.

Mr. Dick Gregory,
thank you for your
very beneficial reminders
about our food choices
in this day and age.
Your passion
and exhaustive research
are definitely
much appreciated.
May you continue
to inspire the world
with your lively energy
and humor!

To learn more about
comedian and activist
Mr. Dick Gregory
please visit:
www.DickGregory.com

Amiable viewers,
thank you
for being with us today
on Vegetarian Elite
featuring the truthful
messages shared by
Mr. Dick Gregory.
We look forward to
seeing you again
for part 2 next Sunday,
November 5.
Coming up next is
Between Master
and Disciples.
See you next time!

On August 11, 2011,
a great comedian and one
of the foremost champions
of civil rights addressed
an audience on the stages
of Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Understand that
we have the power
to change this planet.

Mr. Dick Gregory’s
stand-up comedy
performance followed
the live videoconference
“World Vegan
World Peace:
A Conscious Choice”
with
Supreme Master Ching Hai
as the Guest of Honor.

We have the power
to change it.
And so, in our meditation,
as we sit through
the meditation,
think about, not the
hungry people starving,
but see them getting up
with smiles on their faces,
and understand that
there’s a love out here
that can turn this
whole piece around.
That’s our job, but
you can’t do it with fear.
It’s love, love, love,
and being lovable.

And so as I sit here and
say to Supreme Master,
thank you,
thank you for being here.
First, we’ve always thought
this was a men’s job.
We always thought,
well, the men will come
and save it.
No, no, no,
no, no, no, no.
Human beings have
no sex, have no race,
when love sits in.

Welcome back
faithful viewers
to the second installment
of our two-part series on
Vegetarian Elite featuring
Mr. Dick Gregory –
a professional comedian
with a career
spanning five decades,
a long-standing
human rights advocate,
bestselling author,
anti-drug crusader,
and expert nutritionist.

With his resilient spirit,
he has overcome poverty,
racial injustice, and cancer.
He has participated
in over 100 fasts
and prayer vigils
to raise awareness
about human rights
and world hunger.
As we found out
in part one, Mr. Gregory
also has a fervent desire
to share his fascinating
discoveries about where
our foods come from and
what they do to our bodies.

He has been
credited for introducing
Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.’s son to vegetarianism
who then went on
to influence his mother,
Coretta Scott King,
to become a vegan.
Mr. Gregory also practices
what he preaches.
Instead of lamenting
and bowing
to traditional treatment
when he was diagnosed
with cancer in 2001,
he went public and
helped millions of fans
around the globe
realize that
with a proper lifestyle,
cancer is in fact curable.
Let’s return now to
our insightful interview
with Mr. Gregory
to learn more about
his holistic philosophy.

Well, 99% of my diet is
fruit, ripe fruit,
nothing in the can.
One day, I’ll eat nothing
but grapes.
Another day, I’ll eat
nothing but cantaloupes.
Another day, I’ll eat
nothing but berries
And so basically,
I don’t like eating.
I can go forever
without eating.
And about twice a year,
I’ll do a 40-day water fast;
about three times a year,
I’ll do a 12-day fast
with nothing,
just breathing.
When you do that, you
cannot be moving around,
you can’t be doing
any physical fitness,
and that’s when you start
communicating.

I use it in America where
we have more folks die
from overeating
than under-eating. (Yes.)
And then when you
go on a fast, even people
that don’t agree what
you’re fed, every time
you sit down and eat,
they think about when
they get hungry they eat,
and so that’s
what I use it for,
although that’s a violation
to use a fast for anything
other than purifying
(I see.) yourself
and your consciousness.

One of the turning points
of human health
is when we turn
to the ancient tradition of
detoxing our bodies of all
the unwanted substances
found in our food and air.
Mr. Gregory’s advises
on the subject.

So when you start
detoxifying,
increase the water intake.
And then there’s
different things out here,
different herbs and stuff,
different fruits and stuff
that you can eat, vegetables
that you can eat
to help detoxify the body.
When I went
on my first fast, I could
taste stuff that I ate when
I was five years old, (Yes.)
candies and gum and stuff.
(Yes.) And so that’s
the first thing you do.

Two, when you really
get into detoxification,
you’re nature’s
operating table,
better be still.
Well, in our society
I can’t take off from work;
well when you do that,
the minute you get off,
you go and rest.
We think we can do
the same thing
that we’re doing
and you can’t,
the body is purifying.
You’ve got 75 trillion cells
that are being detoxified
at the same time.
It comes out, the poison.
You see, 85% of the poison
in your body comes out
through your feet
because of gravity pull.
(Yes.)
And so people who work,
walking, they should
change their shoes
three times a day.

Athletes
should never put on
that same pair of tennies
because all those impurities
that stayed in them move
back up into the body.
And so in detoxification,
take foot baths.
But don’t get in the tub,
take foot baths,
because with gravity pull,
it pulls it out.
Walk in the sand
if it’s available.
Because if you see people
sand blast a house,
all at once
it becomes white and
all the dirt is gone, well
the same thing happens
walking in the sand.
(I see.)
And then get information
on detox, there’s so much
information out here now
(Yes.) on detoxification.
Get some.

The final stop in human
dietary evolution is
considered breatharianism
or pranariasim –
living on the invisible
“cosmic energy.”
The dietary scale
starts at the bottom
with eating processed
cooked foods that may
include meats and dairy,
then moves up
to the vegetarian diet,
to veganism,
then to raw food,
onto liquidarianism, and
finally, breatharianism.

In his revolutionary
1973 book titled
“Dick Gregory’s
Natural Diet for Folks
Who Eat: Cookin’
with Mother Nature,”
Mr. Gregory
explains the experience
of being food-free
as “living entirely
on a transcendental plane,
breathing in pure air,
absorbing the direct light
and energies of the Sun,
bathing in pure water;
in other words
living on what
some writers call the
‘supersubstantial bread.’
I personally believe
breatharianism
to be the highest mode
of human living and
an entirely possible way
of life under
ideal circumstances.”

I didn’t realize
the universe
until one day I’m thinking,
“If I don’t eat tonight,
I won’t die.
If I don’t have any money
tonight, I won’t die.”
If you held
my nose and mouth
for 30 minutes, I will die.
The most important thing
on this planet is oxygen.
And nobody
ever taught me
to thank God for oxygen.
They tell me to thank God
for the sandwich
I’m going to eat. (Yes.)
Say the blessing
over some food (Yes.)
I’m going to eat.

But never told me
the most important thing
on this planet (Yes.)
is oxygen.
And that once you start
then you start
having respect.
But wait a minute,
I can’t see it, I can’t
feel it, I can’t taste it.
And nobody has ever
walked up to me
and tapped me and said,
“Here’s your oxygen bill.”
It’s free. (Yes.)
And then the whole body
starts to change.

And so consequently, we
were meant to be nothing
but breatharians.
We were meant
just to breathe.

Mr. Gregory shares
with us his experience
of meditation and prayer,
which allow for a greater
sense of connection
with all life forms.
Well, first we’ve keep
telling people to meditate
and we do that wrong.
Man, all you’ve got to do
is sit quietly, sit quietly.
It’s hard to tell people,
“Sit quietly, don’t think
about anything.”
How do you
not think about anything?
The first part is when
you first wake up, you
just sit quietly, sit quietly.
You don’t have to
put any record on.
You don’t have to
play anything.
It gets you back into
your spiritual self. (Yes.)

It gets you back
to the human part.
It gets you back to where
I can look at a woman
and see another
human being. (Yes.)
I can look at a child and
see another human being.
I can look at
a tree growing and see
something that has life
that’s different from me.
I don’t know what trees are
talking about out there
when they’re talking,
but there are some people
that can hear trees
(Most certainly.)
and listen to them.
Let me tell you
what I’ve been doing
since I’m a little boy.
I hear a siren, I don’t know
where they’re going.

I’ve always said a prayer
for whoever that was.
Who, if it’s somebody
in the ambulance;
if they’re on their way,
firefighters on their way
to a fire,
I’ve always said a prayer.
And then after that I send
a prayer of thanksgiving.
We have that power,
we have that power.

When entertaining a crowd,
Mr. Gregory remembers
to honor his spirituality
before beginning shows.

Thank you.
Let me first say we thank
and praise God that
we’ve all made it here
safely today.
I pray to God that
your return and my return
will be equally as safe.
First let me just say,
I’ve entertained
all over the world,
I’ve enjoyed it
but tonight was
something special.

Yes.

Tonight was something
special.
That’s because
you’re special.

In concluding our tribute
to Mr. Dick Gregory,
one of society’s
living legends of peace
and freedom advocacy,
we’d like
to include his loving and
supportive thoughts of
Supreme Master Ching Hai
and her selfless
contribution to the world.

First, I’d like to say thanks.
When I look at what she’s
[Supreme Master Ching Hai]
able to put together,
she makes it look easy
because of the love,
the kindness, the peace
but to get to where she is,
nobody gave her nothing.
I feel something that
I want to be a part of.
How do I start it?
It starts from here.
So what she has
put together is a relay.
I give a baton to you.
You give it
to somebody else.
And it eventually
comes back to me.
And I say, “Okay, we’re
going to up the distance.
It’s not going to be
a 100-yard relay.
It’s going to be 440 yards.”
And you keep
raising the level and
keep raising the level.

She’s (Supreme Master
Ching Hai) validated by
the progress that she sees.
She’s validated
by taking human beings,
not changing them,
but taking them back
to their original, (Yes.)
space. (Yes.)
I can trust her because
I know her kindness.
Peace, she’s already
created that to go back
and take into me
what I had.
And so all she’s doing is
different because what
she uplifts stays in you.

Mr. Dick Gregory,
we thank you for your
kind-heart and numerous
life-saving ways,
your quest for the truth,
and inspiring
and comedic speeches
to the multitudes –
all of which have brought
about a more benevolent
and harmonious planet.

To learn more about
comedian and activist
Mr. Dick Gregory
please visit:
www.DickGregory.com

Courageous viewers,
we trust you’ve enjoyed
our two- part series
on Vegetarian Elite
featuring the legendary
and brilliant
Mr. Dick Gregory.
Coming up next is
Between Master
and Disciples.
May nature’s
bountiful blessings
bring you inner serenity.